


Spectre

by artemisgrace



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst, Coping, Fear, Fear of Death, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Future Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations, Hope, Loss, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Pining, References to Depression, Sleep Deprivation, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, at least that's how I see it ok, living in hope, references to future character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 23:04:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17734355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artemisgrace/pseuds/artemisgrace
Summary: Prompto's never been all that good at waiting, and this long night is testing both his patience and his sanity.(Set a couple of years into the period of darkness)





	Spectre

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first FFXV fic, so it's a bit of a downer for a starter, but I hope y'all like it anyway.

The bare light bulb that illuminates what passes for his room these days flickers, the filament’s glow shuddering and casting deeper shadows across the space for a moment or two before steadying again, constant but dim. Like most things these last couple of years.

Prompto sits on the edge of his bed and rubs his hands over his knees, feeling the rough, worn material of his pants beneath fingers that have grown more calloused with each hour of the long night. It takes a bit more pressure for him to feel it than it used to, and he curls his fingers, bitten nails catching slightly on the grain of woven threads, feeling the way they dig into the flesh beneath, not quite able to leave a multitude of half-moons through the thickness of the cloth. Not for want of trying.

Today is one of the bad days.

He ought to be sleeping, catching a few winks while he has the time, but it feels like all he has these days is time, and sleep is but one of the myriad of things that yet elude him, prickling like a promenade through a briar patch . . . he needs something to do with his hands, with his mind that just won’t stop reeling, and though it’s probably not a good idea, he reaches under his bed and pulls out a camera case. He dusts the case off with gentle fingers, his digits leaving darker streaks amongst the hazy grey of accumulated time.

He doesn’t take photos much anymore; the lighting is never any good now, and there’s nothing much about this age that he would want to capture in a picture at any rate.

The camera itself is immaculate when he pulls it from the case, of course it is; even if it doesn’t get much use nowadays, Prompto would never let it get dirty or let it fall into disrepair . . . it was a gift, after all. And . . . well, it’s the physical manifestation of better times, the last of his memories that Prompto can still hold in his hands. He keeps it functional so he can keep remembering even when his mind goes floating away.

He fears forgetting the most.

It lights up as he presses the power button and he feels years younger and decades older all at once. It’s definitely a bad idea, but he flicks back to some of the last pictures he took, back when the world was brighter. 

Noctis looks back at him from the screen, face scrunched up as he protests being woken from a nap, and Prompto stops breathing for a moment, whole torso tensing against the sudden sob that threatens to rip its way out of his chest, ribs creaking against the force of it. He curls in on himself until the moment passes, until he swallows the cry that waits at the back of his throat, then he sits back up, bringing his eyes back to the screen. He blinks away the blur that has gathered at the corners of his eyes and though his chin trembles, though his hands tremble, he can’t help but smile at the familiar face, the face he sees behind his eyelids more often than not.

Prompto doesn’t see familiar faces all that often anymore. He knows where Iggy and Gladio are, knows how to find them, but he hasn’t been able to bring himself to visit in a while. He knows they worry, but they seem to respect the distance that he needs these days. It’s easier to be alone by yourself than it is in the company of old friends who know you far too well. Solitude is easier . . .

He wonders sometimes if this would be easier if Noct had died, if he were really gone for good. Would Prompto be able to move on then? Would he be able to let it go, to stop looking at these pictures and holding his breath to keep the despair down? Maybe, but maybe not. Maybe he’d still never stop grieving, but as it is now, he’s been mourning these last two years for something that hasn’t quite happened yet. Something still to come. Something that Prompto knows he can’t stop, and something for which he doesn’t know how long he’ll have to wait.

No one has been able to tell him how to grieve for someone who isn’t dead yet. Maybe grieving for the dead would be easier, but that makes it sound like Prompto wishes Noct had died, and he doesn’t wish that at all, he doesn’t. He’d never wish that.

He wishes that they were still together, still young and stupid, with full lives ahead of them. He wishes that the universe had treated them better, that they’d had the time to be the dumb kids they should have been. They should be growing old slowly, aging with time and not the wear of all these hard days grinding them down to little more than a stump of the potential they’d had . . . the anger of it claws at him from the inside, visceral and overwhelming, leaving him shivering with the chill of it, because they don’t deserve this, none of it, but there’s still nothing to be done. He misses the hot, suffocating rage of his youth, when he’d been passionate in his anger, before the will that kept it warm had died. But he’s gotten awful old in the last 24 or so months, and the anger he feels now doesn’t suffocate; he can breathe easily, but it’s like razor blades in his lungs and all he can do is close his eyes against the cut of it.

He wishes that he’d said what he’d wanted to all those years they’d spent together . . .

He wishes more than anything that Noctis were here, really here, not just a spectral form in the periphery of Prompto’s vision when he’s gone a bit too long without sleep, not just the shape the shadows make in the corner of his eye when the light bulb flickers. He keeps his eyes closed as he rocks himself back and forth above the camera he clutches in his lap, just knowing that if he opens them, he’ll see Noctis standing in the shadow between the coat hook Prompto’s jacket hangs on and the slightly dilapidated wooden form of his dresser. 

He doesn’t know what he’ll do if he has to meet the eyes of that ghost tonight, and he’s got a promise to keep, so he squeezes his eyelids shut tight and holds onto the memories that he grasps in shaking hands like a lifeline. 

He presses the power button to shut the camera off, still without opening his eyes, and sets it on the bed off to the side, where it rests just a bit heavier than it ought to on the thin cushion of the mattress. Empty hands raise, but Prompto still doesn’t know what to do with them, so he presses one to his mouth, covering it with more pressure than is strictly necessary, biting white knuckles to keep back the scream that’s been building for the last two years. 

He doesn’t know what he’ll do if it gets out.

Eyes tightly closed, jaw clenched, he subsides down onto the bed, sinking to the mattress like the bottom of a pool, hands moving to grasp the tangle of his blankets to keep himself from going adrift. He should take off his shoes at least, but that would mean opening his eyes and he can’t do that yet, he just can’t, so he tucks his legs up carefully, curling up around his camera and making sure to let his feet hang just off the edge where they won’t dirty the sheets. 

Through gritted teeth, he whispers not everything that he wants to say, but the best he can manage for now to the spectre that flickers in the corner of the room by the dresser and in all the dark corners of Prompto’s mind. 

“I’ll wait, but . . . don’t take too long, okay, buddy?”

The ghost doesn’t answer, can’t answer, but Prompto finds a sort of bitter comfort in the silence. 

All he has to do is keep it together . . . and keep waiting.

**Author's Note:**

> So I've got this idea for a silly college AU thing where the bros are all on a student exchange and things go amusingly wrong. Would y'all be interested in that, after this downer?


End file.
